The Women's Basketball Academic All-America Team Member of the Year is the annually-awarded most outstanding singular college basketball female athlete selected for the Academic All-America Teams in a given year. The Academic All-America program is selected by the College Sports Communicators (formerly known as College Sports Information Directors of America, or CoSIDA), and recognizes combined athletic performance and academic achievement excellence of the nation's top student-athletes.
From 1996 through 2011, one winner each was chosen from both the College and University Divisions for all twelve Academic All-America teams. The University Division team included eligible participants from National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) Division I member schools, while the College Division team included scholar-athletes from the NCAA Division II, NCAA Division III, National Association of Intercollegiate Athletics (NAIA), Canadian universities and colleges and two-year colleges.
Beginning in 2012, CoSIDA revamped its award structure. The University Division was renamed "Division I", and NCAA Divisions II and III were made their own separate All-American categories. The remaining schools initially still comprised the College Division, but after the 2017–18 school year that was replaced with the NAIA division, restricted to members of that governing body.
Currently, each team selects Academic All-District honorees in eight geographic districts across the United States and Canada. The districts are: District 1 (CT, MA, ME, NH, NY, RI, VT), District 2 (DC, DE, KY, MD, NJ, PA, WV), District 3 (NC, TN, VA), District 4 (AL, FL, GA, PR, SC), District 5 (IL, IN, MI, OH), District 6 (AR, IA, LA, MN, MO, MS, MT, ND, SD, WI, WY), District 7 (CO, ID, KS, NE, NM, NV, OK, TX), and District 8 (AK, AZ, CA, HI, OR, UT, WA, Canada). The All-District honorees make up the All-America team ballots. Currently, all twelve Academic All-American teams (men's and women's basketball, men's and women's soccer, men's and women's track & field, men's baseball, women's softball, men's American football, women's volleyball, men's and women's swimming & diving, men's and women's tennis and men's and women's at-large teams) have one Academic All-American of the Year per division. One of these twelve sport-by-sport Academic All-Americans of the year is selected as the Academic All-America Team Member of the Year for each division. The most recent women's basketball players to have earned the all-sports honor did so in 2024—Caitlin Clark of Iowa in Division I, Samantha Pirosko of Gannon in Division II, and Grace Beyer of UHSP in the NAIA.
History
, Stanford University has had the most women's basketball Academic All-America honorees (18, and 2 more than Ashland University), but only Chiney Ogwumike has been recognized with this award.
, 13 of the Women's Basketball Academic All-America of the Year winners have gone on to win the overall Academic All-America of the Year. The six Division I overall winners have been Rebecca Lobo (1995, before there were separate awards by level), Ruth Riley (2001), Stacey Dales-Schuman (2002), Maya Moore (2011), Aliyah Boston (2022) and Caitlin Clark (2023 and 2024). Other overall winners have included Kari Daugherty (Division II, 2013), Lauren Battista (Division II, 2014), Samantha Pirosko (Division II, 2024), Grace Barry (NAIA, 2020), and Grace Beyer (NAIA, 2024) as well as Julie Roe (1997) and Emily Bloss (2001) before the College Division was split.
, there have been 12 repeat winners of this award, including 7 times in Division I: Michelle Flamoe (1988 and 1989), Karen Jennings (1992 and 1993), Moore (2010 and 2011), Elena Delle Donne (2012 and 2013), Ally Disterhoft (2016 and 2017), Boston (2021 and 2022), and Clark (2023 and 2024). In the college division Emilie Hanson (1994 and 1995) and Lindsey Dietz (2005 and 2006) repeated; in Division III, Jenna Taylor (2021 and 2022) and Natalie Bruns (2024 and 2025) have repeated. Beyer (NAIA, 2022–2024) was the first three-time recipient in women's basketball.
Tables of winners
+KeyIndicates winners of the all-sports Academic All-America award. All winners are American unless indicated otherwise.
Two-division era (1988–2011) +Women's Basketball Academic All-America Team Members of the Year (1988–2011) Year University Division College Division Winner School Winner School 1988 Oregon State 1989 (2) Oregon StateUT Martin 1990 Oregon 1991 Drake 1992 Nebraska 1993 (2) Nebraska 1994 Marquette 1995 UConn (2) 1996 UConn 1997 NC State 1998 Missouri State 1999 Purdue 2000 Jacksonville State 2001 Notre Dame>Emporia State 2002 Oklahoma 2003 VCU 2004 Penn StateSouth Dakota 2005 Ball State 2006 Kent State (2) 2007 Middle Tennessee 2008 Tennessee 2009 Murray State 2010 UConn 2011 (2) UConn
Four-division era (2012–present) +Women's Basketball Academic All-America Team Members of the Year (2012–present) Year Division I Division II Division III College/NAIA Winner School Winner School Winner School Winner School 2012 Delaware Jennifer Jorgensen 2013 (2) Delaware Hollie German 2014 Stanford 2015 Western Illinois 2016 Iowa 2017 (2) Iowa California Baptist 2018 New Mexico 2019 Idaho 2020 Texas Tech 2021 Aliyah Boston South Carolina 2022 Aliyah Boston (2) South Carolina (2) 2023 Iowa (2) 2024 (2) IowaGannon NYU (3) 2025 USC Lubbock Christian (2)NYU Indiana Wesleyan 2026 UConn Colorado Mesa Carroll (WI) Dordt
Footnotes
References
External links Academic All-America information page All-time list